The Coulomb Branch of Gauge Theory from Rotating Branes

Abstract

At zero temperature the Coulomb Branch of ${\cal N}=4$ super Yang-Mills theory is described in supergravity by multi-center solutions with D3-brane charge. At finite temperature and chemical potential the vacuum degeneracy is lifted, and minima of the free energy are shown to have a supergravity description as rotating black D3-branes. In the extreme limit these solutions single out preferred points on the moduli space that can be interpreted as simple distributions of branes --- for instance, a uniformly charged planar disc. We exploit this geometrical representation to study the thermodynamics of rotating black D3-branes. The low energy excitations of the system appear to be governed by an effective string theory which is related to the singularity in spacetime.